Automated Web

Testing with Selenium

Erik Doernenburg
ThoughtWorks

Agenda

What is Selenium?
Writing Maintainable Tests

What is Selenium?

Test tool for web applications

Runs in any mainstream browser
Supports tests in many languages
Selenese (pure HTML, no backend required)
Java, C#, Perl, Python, Ruby
Record/playback (Selenium IDE)
Open Source with corporate backing
Lives at selenium.openqa.org

Demo

Record a test in Selenium IDE

Show same test written in Java

Java Test example

public void testGoogleTestSearch() throws Exception
{
selenium.open("http://www.google.com/webhp");
assertEquals("Google", selenium.getTitle());
selenium.type("q", "Selenium OpenQA");
selenium.click("btnG");
selenium.waitForPageToLoad("5000");
assertEquals("Selenium OpenQA - Google Search",
selenium.getTitle());
}

Java SetUp/TearDown example

public void setUp() throws Exception
{
selenium = new DefaultSelenium(
"localhost", 4444, "*chrome",
"http://www.google.com");
selenium.start();
}
public void tearDown() throws Exception
{
selenium.stop();
}

A few Selenese commands

click

getHtmlSource

isVisible

close

getTitle

keyPress

createCookie

getValue

mouseOver

dragdrop

goBack

open

fireEvent

isElementPresent

refresh

getEval

isTextPresent

type

Element locators
selenium.click("btnG");
ID: id=foo
Name: name=foo
First ID, then name: identifier=foo
DOM: document.forms[myform].myDropdown
XPath: xpath=//table[@id='table1']//tr[4]/td[2]
Link Text: link=sometext
CSS Selector: css=a[href=#id3]
Sensible defaults, e.g. xpath if starts with //

How Selenium works

Agenda

What is Selenium?
Writing Maintainable Tests

Standard end-user black-box test

1. Login as administrator
2. Create a user
3. Log out
4. Login as that user
5. Create a folder
6. Create a thingy in that folder
7. Search for that thingy in the search box
8. Make sure your thingy shows up on the search
results page

Fragile Automated Tests

Exercising irrelevant features

Logging in/Logging out
Creating a folder
Creating a thingy
If the UI for any one of those features changes,
your search test fails

Know when to record tests

Recorded tests reuse no code

Record & Tweak vs. Fire and Forget
Slight change in folder creator page means
all of those tests have to be re-recorded
from scratch

Use the recorder to create reusable code

Unit testing vs. Integration testing

Selenium tests are integration tests

Functional/Acceptance/User/Compatibility

Unit tests verify a unit in isolation

If FooTest.java fails, the bug must be in Foo.java

Cannot fail due to browser incompatibilities
Must be completely isolated from each other

Integration tests verify that units work together

Requires testing multiple configurations (browsers)
Tend to build on the side-effects of earlier tests

Presentation Model

Create a layer of classes that mimic the UI

a field for every text box, etc.
a method for every button
Test the application flow using this model
Can use normal unit test framework
Insulated from design changes
Use Selenium to check wiring and browser
compatibility

Create abstractions

Tests can use all language features

extract method, inheritance,
public void testSearchForThingy()
{
createTestUserAndLogin();
createThingyInFolder("Foo", "Test Folder");
searchForThingy("Foo");
assertTrue(isPresentInResultList("Foo"));
}

Re-use makes tests less fragile

Use your code directly

Prepare your search tests using model API

FolderBean fb = new FolderBean();
fb.setParent(FolderBean.ROOT);
fb.setName("foo");
fb.createNewFolder(); // adds a folder to the DB
selenium.open("/search");
selenium.type("query", "foo");
selenium.click("search");
assertTrue(selenium.isTextPresent("foo found");

Your tests and web app are written in same

language...

A class per test vs. A class per page

Do create a class for each test

this inherits from TestCase
contains the flow of the test

If the same pages are used by multiple tests

create a separate hierarchy of classes, one per page

inject the test into the page to access Selenium

public void testWorkflow() {

! WelcomePage welcomePage = new WelcomePage(this);
! welcomePage.selectDailyView();
! DailyView dailyView = new DailyView(this);
! dailyView.selectLocation("LDN");
! dailyView.clickOk();

JUnit vs. TestNG

JUnit is opinionated software

public void setUp() {

log("setup");
explicitly prevented
Dependencies between tests} are
Separate tests are testing separate
public units
void testFoo() {
log("foo");
every test method
Everything gets torn down after
}
browser
Constantly starting/stoppingpublic
void testBar() {

TestNG has dependsOnX } log("bar");

public void tearDown() {

log("teardown");
}
________________________
setup foo teardown
setup bar teardown

Summary

Use Selenium when it makes sense

when you want to reproduce a users
interaction with your application in a
real web browser

when you depend on the browser (AJAX)

Do consider presentation model and HTTPUnit
Use Selenium for Integration Testing
Use Selenium in your development environment
Use the features offered by your language